Florida Small Business Law

Florida Small Business Law

CPC Law is a small business and its Founder and Managing Attorney, Charles Castellon, is an entrepreneur and small business owner. We understand our small business owner clients.

It’s been said the entrepreneur is the crazy person who works 100 hours per week to avoid working 40 for someone else. While there’s no doubt that a great work ethic is essential to success, our firm strives to make life easier and business more profitable for our clients. We do this through solid planning, protection and problem-solving strategies and services.

CPC Law protects our business clients’ interests in a variety of transactional matters. Many things can go wrong in a transaction and we are your experienced and knowledgeable advocates on your side from the initial due diligence stage through negotiations, drafting or reviewing contracts through closing.

Business Purchase and Sale

Far too many business people buy and sell businesses without proper planning and bad things happen. There’s usually more risk on the buying side, but sellers can make costly mistakes too.

When buying a business or selling a business, there are certain decisions to make and required legal documents in every deal. The first consideration is what assets will be bought and sold. It could involve the sale of shares of a corporation or membership interests in an LLC.

Another way to structure the deal is for one business entity to buy the assets of another company without buying the company itself. Real estate is often involved, usually in the form of buying a commercial property or assuming the lease if the seller is a tenant.

Financing and debt considerations usually come into play. This may be in the form of financing a purchase through a business loan, seller financing and taking the accounts payable or assuming the accounts receivable of the business being bought.

There are many more issues to consider and having an attorney to represent you, along with other trusted advisors, like a CPA, can make all the difference between a successful and regrettable deal. Many have learned the hard way that some of the best investments are the ones you never make. That’s why good legal representation can help you close the deals that are right or walk away and cut your losses on the ones that aren’t.

CPC Law will represent you in a business transaction from the initial contract through the final closing. We give you sound advice and sometimes it’s what you need to hear but don’t want to. Far too often, business people want to cut corners and make things simpler than they really are. They want to avoid expenses such as legal fees and often leave issues unresolved and use online or store-bought contracts in a box that don’t cover all their needs. At the very least, you should have an attorney consultation and measure twice so you only cut once.

Business Succession Planning

As a small business owner, if you were to die, what would happen to

The business you’ve worked so hard to build?

Your surviving loved ones?

Your business partners?

Your employees?

Just as we promote the virtues of estate planning for individuals and families, we urge all small business owners to craft a carefully thought-out succession plan for the only sure thing in life—death. Unlike giant multi-national corporations, the death of one business owner can cause permanent devastation to the stakeholders of the business, including family, employees and surviving partners.

The Buy-Sell Agreement is a contract for business people that may include:

Corporate shareholders

Partners

LLC Members

Key Employees of a Business

Through a Buy-Sell Agreement, we can ensure the transfer of business interests following death or disability in a pre-determined, mutually-agreed upon way that guarantees a market for their sale. The Buy-Sell Agreement between business partners allows the company to buy from the deceased business owners’ heirs their share of the business. The partners agree on a fair valuation for the company and the business sale is funded through life insurance policies the partners buy on each others’ lives.

Without this kind of thoughtful planning, undesired results will follow the death of a business owner. This may include scenarios such as the surviving family members stepping into ownership to be partners with the surviving owner, often without the interest or ability to run the business.

We advocate the right planning for our clients to take control of their lives and businesses, both for themselves and the people they care about—their family members, partners and employees.

Civil Litigation

It’s an unfortunate reality in the business world that many business people do not behave honestly. We believe that the promises in contracts and agreements, whether verbal or written, should be honored or the business world cannot function and our economy suffers.

At CPC Law, we counsel our small business clients through their legal battles, including contract disputes, collections and all of the various problems that arise in commercial dealings. Our time-honored approach is to pursue the best solutions in the most economical fashion available. This means that we don’t rush to file lawsuits but, instead, work diligently to achieve out of court solutions even when a compromise is required to contain the damage.

In commercial lawsuits, a money blood bath can easily happen where only the lawyers win. We believe in old-school ideas such as principle and what’s right, but part of our job is to remind our clients of the costs associated with principle and doing the right thing.

Our small business clients have lives outside of work and the stress of the business in general and lawsuits in particular can be overwhelming. At CPC Law, we strive to help our clients achieve their desired work-family life balance and pay special attention to quick and satisfactory resolutions of disputes before they get out of control and cause undue stress. Our firm believes in mediation as a useful way to resolve disputes and work diligently to achieve the best deal while avoiding the risks of trial, if reasonably possible.

When there’s no alternative than to go to court, whether when we file cases as plaintiff’s counsel or defend cases filed against our business clients, we fight effectively, efficiently and hard to achieve the best results. Our attorneys are effective and experienced litigators and we understand the importance of good people skills, even with our opponents.

If you want a “pit bull” to pursue a “scorched earth” policy to hurt our adversaries regardless of costs and consequences, we’re not the right firm for you. If you want outstanding representation and a great ROI on your legal services investment, we want to talk with you. For more discussion on lawsuits in general, see our Civil Litigation page.